Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Maggie's Body Tuning Story

This is the story of Maggie (not her real name).

Back in the 1990’s Maggie got into a car accident that resulted in a lot of pain in her knee. She went to see many specialists, including physical therapists, acupuncturists and medical doctors, but no one was able to offer her any lasting results.

Mostly they would manually manipulate her knee for about five minutes and then put her on some kind of machine. They didn’t tell her anything more could be done to help her. Her leg muscles were atrophying (wasting away) at an alarming rate. The only thing that gave her a modicum of help was acupuncture, which helped her regain her muscle tone, but didn’t offer relief from the pain.

Finally, her friend told her about Shmuel Tatz. “This is the guy who can help you,” he said. Maggie went in to see Dr Tatz, who after touching her knee for no more than five minutes, reported, “This is jammed. I can help you in two sessions per week and it will take ten or twelve weeks.”

Ten weeks later, as he predicted, she was better. To her amazement, Shmuel was working on her knee for thirty minutes straight. His technique involves listening to the body and responding to what it’s asking for, so he is never at a loss for what to do to help make a body move better. Maggie says she remembers how surprised she was that she not only got a confident answer, but that the answer was “Yes, I can help you!” And she was further surprised to learn that his prediction was exactly accurate; she was much better within ten weeks of beginning Body Tuning.

Many years later, Maggie finds herself back at the Body Tuning studio. This time she hurt her back lifting a heavy bag of cement after a long day of manual labor. She no longer lives in the city and now, in order to see Shmuel she has about a three-hour-long drive each direction.

Her first reaction was to take her injury to a doctor, who strongly suggested she have surgery, and was mentally preparing her for accepting the reality that she needed surgery and only surgery. But Maggie, being a smart and educated woman, did some research and what she found out about this particular surgery was very interesting. In the studies, it was shown that of the people who had back pain, the same percentage of people got better, whether they had the surgery or were part of the control group that didn’t get the surgery. The results were statistically the same whether they had the surgery or didn’t. At her surgeon’s urgent recommendation and insistence that she would only get better through surgery, she opted to have the surgery--and it didn’t help in the least.

Since she no longer lived in New York City, and didn’t have easy access to Shmuel Tatz, she would have to drive an average of three hours in for her treatment and then drive another three hours back home afterwards, which would effectively eliminate most of the benefits of the treatment. She was distressed by not having access to the one person she felt could give her relief.

After about four years of suffering, her situation changed so that she would be able to spend a few nights in NYC, so she immediately called and made multiple appointments for Body Tuning.

I spoke to Maggie after her third of four treatments in the past two weeks, and she is reporting that her back already feels much better and she is finally getting relief from her constant pain.

This story ends on a sad note. Maggie knows that these four sessions, although they are doing her a great deal of good, won’t be enough to completely help her. Her inability to have regular access to Shmuel Tatz and Body Tuning is going to prevent her from getting the proper care and rehabilitation she needs for her back to heal.

If she lived in New York and had better access to Dr Tatz, or if more people practiced the art of Body Tuning, and someone near her could tune her body regularly, she may find herself recovered in another ten weeks.